The mounted troops and the infantry were got out and departed for the scene of trouble, and the band played as usual at four o'clock on Sunday, the music tending to calm the people, though all were wondering what was going on on the other side of the Istlaltepec hill. Five miles, it seems to me, is a little too near for comfort. Aunt L.'s house was surrounded by soldiers ready to surrender _or_ attack. "_Viva Mexico!_" Several days ago a pastoral letter from the Archbishop of Morelia was published. In it he gives his flock the salutary advice to keep out of politics altogether. I think every one realizes that Diaz enforced protection for all and everybody, and it will take years for things to settle down. There is a fair amount of politics in these letters, but if one happens to be so inclined one finds oneself taking politics in with the air. They are everywhere, yet it seems to me, of the threads of destiny that are being spun, I get only a few loose ends. Great foreign interests, oil, ore, and transport, play themselves out with many a shift and twist, against the Mexican political film, shaking, unstable, distorted, now too big, now too small, out of proportion as they come down the stage or go off. But always of breathless interest. _May 20th._ The King of Denmark is called into another kingdom, where he is not king. How suddenly the summons came, when he was strolling about Hamburg in the evening, unattended! The end of mortality, kingly or otherwise; but I have lost an irreplaceable friend.... Peace to his soul! I am so sorry you did not see him on the Riviera. Do you know that ---- too has gone? I remember that luncheon she gave for him in ---- and didn't ask me, and how surprised and displeased he was when he came in for a moment in the morning and said, "I will see you at lunch," and I answered, "Not asked." We had to laugh, it was so ridiculous. How tragic, too, the death of the young Cumberland prince with Von Grote, his aide-de-camp![48] We used to see them both so often in Vienna. The Mexican episode may be drawing to a close, but _quién sabe?_ All life down here assumes a mysteriousness, even in its simplest manifestation. The natural phenomena, the things we consider quite impersonal in New York or Paris or Berlin, seem to perform their operations here in an astoundingly intimate way. A sunset is a more than daily occurrence, due to the cold fact that the earth revolves on its axis just so often; that moonlight experience of last autumn remains in memory, and a consciousness is always with one of an intimacy with natural decrees.